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Web Applications Come To GNOME 3.2

Phoronix: Web Applications Come To GNOME 3.2

Besides the already talked about features of GNOME 3.2, one of the features that hasn't received much attention (aside from at the Berlin Linux Desktop Summit) until now with the GNOME 3.2 Beta is the web applications support in this next major update to the GNOME desktop...

Are new features really the most important thing right now? How about getting some (a lot) configuration options back, or getting some basic stuff to work like seperate x screens in fallback mode.

I was really amazed how unusable gnome 3 is for me. Didn't even get to trying seperate x screens in shell, as i had already seen enough. And i'm pretty used to bugged filled alpha's and this is the first time i actually reversed something, although i thought about doing it a lot more often. And this was actually the whole weekend last week, not when gnome 3 was still alpha.

Almost no ability to customize + not working basic features + no real hope that will change in short time = time to move on. Now only if i knew to what...

The options were removed by purpose, so why should they be put back? Also, configuration options are really evil from an interaction design perspective. (Power) users think they want them, but in reality options make software worse.

(Power) users think they want them, but in reality options make software worse.

Users that complain they have to install a GUI to change some of the defaults are not 'Power Users'. There is nothing wrong with installing software to enhance your system. I will never understand why people have such a aversion to it on Linux when people on Windows or OS X obviously have no problem with it.

The most important thing Gnome can do is have solid core functionality that can be depended on and expanded upon by users.

This web app integration is one of those 'new' things that should of happened years ago. Relatively very few new applications are written for the desktop, any desktop, compared to what is happening in web applications.

The options were removed by purpose, so why should they be put back? Also, configuration options are really evil from an interaction design perspective. (Power) users think they want them, but in reality options make software worse.

Although i can see your point i wonder if that is really the case. Was gnome 2 really doing that bad? I surely don't think so.
It might be true in some cases, but i think developer laziness might also be an aspect.

And to say that users only think they need them is simply not true. Maybe only a few people actually take the time to look at the options to find ways to make it more efficient in their usage case, but don't act like it's not useful at all. In fact i have seen many times that settings is changed from the defaults, later became the defaults.
But since it's only a small amount of people doing so i can see why developers don't want them.

Well thanks for pointing out that waiting is no use for me and i do need to move on. But since i am so used to my customized environment and apps it's not going to be easy, that is the down side to my way of working.

And to say that users only think they need them is simply not true. Maybe only a few people actually take the time to look at the options to find ways to make it more efficient in their usage case, but don't act like it's not useful at all. In fact i have seen many times that settings is changed from the defaults, later became the defaults.
But since it's only a small amount of people doing so i can see why developers don't want them.

There is relatively very few things you can do in Gnome 2 that you cannot do in Gnome-shell.

But there is a crapload of things that you can do in Gnome-shell that you will never be able to do in Gnome 2.

This is because Sawfish was fully scriptable. But this power came with huge usability issues and back then Window managers were specific to one environment... meaning if you tried to use KDE apps on Gnome (or visa versa) then things would get all wonky.

Metacity was a vastly simpler window manager and people bitch and moaned about that for years. But it did one thing that Sawfish couldn't... behave sanely and predictably. As a result it was much more usable.

Now we have not only a composited desktop, but a fully scriptable environment layered on top of a mature window manager engine. This can be a quantum leap forward in flexibility and configurability. We just have to see what people do with 3.2 and 3.4 releases!

Well thanks for pointing out that waiting is no use for me and i do need to move on. But since i am so used to my customized environment and apps it's not going to be easy, that is the down side to my way of working.

I used to spend hours futzing around with this or that and getting everything to work exactly how I wanted it to.

I've learned since then it is mostly a waste of time. It just means that I wasted hours doing something other then getting stuff done and it causes headaches later on. There are a few big things that I modify every time I do a fresh install or setup a new machine, but by and large I stick to the defaults and just learn those instead of trying to force things.